Aubrey Plaza is coming face to face with her younger self in her new film, My Old Ass.
Prime Video released the first trailer for the coming of age comedy on Thursday, June 27, which sees free-spirited Elliot (Maisy Stella) coming conjuring up her wisecracking 39-year-old future self, played by Plaza. When Elliot’s “old ass” starts handing out warnings about what her younger self should and shouldn’t do, Elliot realizes she has to rethink everything about family, love and what’s becoming a transformative summer.
Thursday’s trailer opens with Elliot determined to have one last summer packed with good times before leaving for college, so she and her closest pals camp out on a remote island and trip on mushrooms. Things then take a turn when she finds herself in conversation with an imaginary woman who claims to be the person she will become in two decades. Elliot tries to adhere to her own words of wisdom, but when she meets a boy named Chad (Percy Hynes White) — the exact name future her said to stay away from — things get complicated, and Elliot starts to take a closer look at what her future self is telling her.
In addition to serving up plenty of raw, emotional and self-reflective moments, My Old Ass clearly will also be filled with laugh-out-loud zingers. “Can we kiss? Can I at least touch my old ass?” Elliot asks her older self at one point while they lay in bed. “Oh my god, you need to be locked up,” future Elliot replies.
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The movie premiered at Sundance earlier this year was written and directed by Megan Park. Margot Robbie and her husband, Tom Ackerley, serve as producers, with Hynes White, Maddie Ziegler and Kerrice Brooks as supporting cast.
“I’m not a huge genre person and I didn’t want to make it sci-fi, and I kept it simple,” Park, 37, told Filmmaker Magazine in January of crafting the story. “We kept referencing 13 Going On 30 where [Jennifer Garner’s character is] in the closet and some magic dust falls on her head and she’s transported. The buy-in is so great, and that movie is so wonderful that you just keep going with the story. We wanted it to feel really grounded like that. And the mushroom trip was a fun way into the world that I haven’t seen before, which can leave you thinking, ‘Did that happen?’”
Park explained that for her, the most important aspect was getting viewers to emotionally resonate with the story more so than understanding the imaginary. “If it’s there, then you can kind of get away with anything,” she explained. “And that’s what I wanted to get right first.”
In addition to 13 Going on 30, Park said she and her team looked to other iconic coming of age films — like Now and Then and My Girl — to help craft something timeless. “Those types of films felt very defining for my generation,” she added. “And I have more interest in telling stories from the female point of view. That’s the life I’ve lived and those are the stories I want to tell.”
As for working alongside Robbie, 33, and Acklerley, 34, and LuckyChap, Park shared that the duo approached her after they enjoyed her 2021 film, The Fallout, starring Jenna Ortega.
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“They said, do you have any ideas? And I was like, ‘Well, I’ve been thinking about this like mushroom trip when you meet your younger-older self,’” she recalled. “And they loved the idea. It was honestly so natural, I just got such good vibes from them right away.”
Park called the couple “such lovely humans” who run a “no ego” company, noting that the lack of “hierarchy”’ helped bring out the best work from everyone involved.
“That’s I think why we connected so much because we approach it the same way,” she continued. “And I think that’s why they have so much repeat business with incredible filmmakers. It was a dream. Tom and Margot and Bronte [Payne], they were all there. And Margot was also bringing me gifts and cleaning my cabin for me as well as being by the monitor. When I say ‘no ego,’ I truly mean no ego. They’re all really down to earth and wonderful people.”
My Old Ass hits select theaters on September 13 and will be available to stream on Prime Video.
